Jen Richardson

VET
 

There was something different

in the way he moved.
Shaken and shaking
like a beaten pup
after chewing a slipper.
 
He huddled in the blind shadows
made by the bread truck's open doors,
metal cooling,
tick, tick, tick,
in the convenience store parking lot.
 
No matter how many times
he smoothed the wild corona
of matted white, gray and black hair
around his permanently lined face..
no matter how artfully he tried
to hide the DTs
and the smell of urine on his shoes..
no matter how politely
he held his tongue
so the curses wouldn't
offend and ultimately
wound everyone around him..
 
he was still
a nameless face
with a name
no would would
bother to discover.
 

Jen Richardson lives and writes in Los Angeles, California, a place she views as part circus, part ballet, and part bullfight.